11 h 10 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 11 h 10 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the force that lights the world also holds the key to a weary soul?
In Marie Corelli’s A Romance of Two Worlds, a young creative woman cannot sleep or find joy in her art. Doctors offer no relief. Then she meets Heliobas, a calm, learned man who claims that electricity and spiritual life share a hidden force. His teaching opens a different path through her exhaustion and sadness.
Heliobas calls this force the electric principle: a power that, according to his teaching, runs through the universe and every human being. As the narrator explores his ideas, questions of prayer, pain, and life after death take on new urgency. Her search reaches beyond the earth in a vision guided by the radiant Azul.
What you’ll discover
- A search for relief Enter the narrator’s sleepless world, where even the art she loves no longer brings joy.
- A teacher of hidden forces Meet Heliobas, whose calm authority gives his claims about spirit and electricity a compelling presence.
- A journey beyond earth Follow Azul through a vision of space that sets one woman’s troubles against a vast universe.
- Reason meets spiritual belief Explore a story that challenges the choice between scientific thought and faith in the soul.
- A voice of personal testimony Hear the narrator tell her experience in a first-person voice shaped like a confession.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you like Victorian romances with a touch of the marvelous, stories of healing and friendship, and bold ideas about science and faith.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stranger quiets her troubled mind
- Her dreams give healing a name
- Cellini reveals his own rescue
- Trust comes before an explanation
- Friendship makes strange science feel familiar
- Music and love reveal unseen connections
- Compassion gives her questions new meaning
- Electricity becomes a language for faith
- Wanting is not the same as loving
Who’s who
- The narratorA young half Italian musician and improviser who arrives ill and doubtful and wants health, art and proof that faith is true.
- HeliobasA calm Chaldean count who heals without fees, studies human electricity and offers the narrator a path to knowledge.
- ZaraHis sister, a sculptor of uncommon beauty and serenity who shares a bond with a spirit beyond earthly life.
- Raffaello CelliniA gifted Italian painter, once saved from despair by Heliobas, who sends the narrator toward the same help.
- Prince Ivan PetroffskyA rich, cheerful Russian nobleman who loves Zara hopelessly and doubts the science of his friend Heliobas.
- Amy EverardThe narrator's American friend, light hearted and fond of clothes, who cannot follow her into spiritual matters.
- AzulA radiant spirit and guide who leads the narrator through the heavens and stands close to the heart of Heliobas.
- LeoA great Newfoundland dog who carries messages and fetches whatever Heliobas wills him to bring.
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- Hardcover
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A Romance of Two Worlds
by Marie Corelli · 1886
A sleepless musician on the Riviera meets a painter whose presence calms her and dreams of a mysterious name.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEnglish
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In short
A young musician cannot sleep, cannot work and cannot bear music, the one thing she loves. Her doctor sends her to the Riviera, and there a calm Italian painter looks at her once and her nerves go quiet.
A Romance of Two Worlds at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 25 min5 h 5 min fast, 7 h 40 min slow
- Length
- 91,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1886by Marie Corelli
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A sleepless musician travels south to Cannes
The story opens in a London winter. The narrator, a young musician, suffers from months of insomnia, dread and exhaustion. Even music, her one passion, wearies her, and her doctor fails to help.
He sends her to the Riviera with two American friends, Colonel Everard and his quick, fashionable wife Amy. They settle in a hotel in Cannes, among roses and orange trees, but her old misery creeps back after a few days of false cheer.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1886
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 7 h 15 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Corelli, Marie. A Romance of Two Worlds. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-romance-of-two-worlds.
Corelli, M. (2026). A romance of two worlds. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-romance-of-two-worlds (Original work published 1886)
Corelli, Marie. A Romance of Two Worlds. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-romance-of-two-worlds.
@book{corelli2026romance,
author = {Corelli, Marie},
title = {A Romance of Two Worlds},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-romance-of-two-worlds},
note = {First published 1886}
}
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What is A Romance of Two Worlds about?
It tells of a sick young musician who is cured by a healer named Heliobas, then lifted in a vision through the planets to a central sphere of light. The book blends a social story with a theory that the soul is electric.
Who is Heliobas in the book?
Heliobas is a Chaldean count living in Paris who claims to have trained the electric force in his own body. He heals without fees, directs the narrator's cure and teaches her the science of the soul.
What does the electric creed in the novel mean?
It is Heliobas's written view that God is pure radiant light, that each person carries an electric spark of soul, and that Christ opened a line of communication between earth and heaven like a cable across the sea.
The author
Marie Corelli
1855–1924 · British novelist
Marie Corelli was an English novelist and one of the best-selling authors of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, at her height outselling most of her famous contemporaries. The Sorrows of Satan, her 1895 tale of a devil's bargain in literary London, is often called one of the world's first modern bestsellers.
More by Marie Corelli
See all their booksMore like this
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